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New member Introduction and questions - Westerx123 - 01-19-2020

Hi, I’m in my 50’s and quite sure I have Sleep Apnea. I told my doctor and am waiting to hear back to have a sleep study. I specifically stated Sleep Apnea and not OSA because of what I’ve been observing.

Here’s my story. Whenever I’ve had my blood oxygen measured, it never read over 97 and usually 95-94. I started wondering about it when my 94 year old father with a failing heart read around 98. I mentioned what I was observing with my ENT doctor and he told me to start measuring my blood oxygen more often since it didn’t sound right. I ended up buying the O2ring that logs over time and decided to try it over night. It showed jagged O2 levels that occasionally dipped into the mid 80’s. 

I turned on the vibrate alarm a few nights ago to alert me when my O2 dropped and it has alerted several times each night. What has me concerned is that at no time was I struggling to breathe. Last night it alerted me and I started breathing consciously, it continued to alert low O2, so I glanced at the reading and it read 80%, but I had no sensation of low oxygen. I just continued taking deep breaths until it stopped alerting. I checked the log this morning and it showed my O2 had dropped to 76%, but I never felt like I was suffocating or struggling to breathe and only knew my O2 was low because of the alerting. I’ve never woken up struggling to breathe. The battery in the pulse Oximeter went dead around 3am, so I don’t know how the rest of the night went.

Last Friday night, I didn’t wake up rested and saw my O2 leveled out at 90-91 for an hour at a time then would start jumping to the higher 90’s and drop into the 80’s. I had an idea this was going to be a bad night from the start because it started alerting even before I was fully asleep, even though I wasn’t aware it was dropping. It actually alerted 20 something times overnight, but I don’t remember the alerts.

Has anyone else had this experience? Is this how CSA works? It doesn’t sound like OSA. I’ve tried googling sleep apnea, but can’t find references to my experience. I guess I’ll find out when I have my sleep study. 

Thanks for reading this far and I will let you know what the results show.


RE: New member Introduction and questions - Plmnb - 01-19-2020

Hi Welcome!  You will receive lots of help here from many knowledgeable people.  I'm too new to offer much advice.  

However, just to touch on your first paragraph: OSA IS an obstructive sleep apnea,  I believe the most common type.  I will be corrected if wrong Smile

When you say you specifically stated "sleep apnea" you were encompassing ALL forms of sleep apnea.

Good luck,
Plmnb


RE: New member Introduction and questions - Westerx123 - 01-19-2020

Thanks for the response. I used the generic expression “sleep apnea” since I wasn’t sure if anyone else with OSA or CSA had the experience of not struggling to breathe. I’ve done some more googling and see I might be experiencing respiratory depression along with my sleep apnea (OSA or CSA). I think I’ll contact my doctor tomorrow and give them an update.


RE: New member Introduction and questions - Dormeo - 01-19-2020

I am never aware of having an OA, or a CA or H, for that matter. So I wouldn't draw too many conclusions yet. It's good you will be getting a sleep study. Ideally you will have a full polysomnographic study, which includes EEG information that helps a lot in identifying what is going on. More here:

https://www.mayoclinic.org/tests-procedures/polysomnography/about/pac-20394877

and here:

http://www.apneaboard.com/wiki/index.php/Sleep_study


RE: New member Introduction and questions - Melman - 01-19-2020

Be sure to get a full copy of your sleep study, not just the summary. If you post it here, with personal info, redacted, we wil be better able to advise you. If your told you need a machine, be sure to come back here before accepting one. It's not uncommon for suppliers to provide sub-optimal machines.


RE: New member Introduction and questions - ApneaQuestions - 01-19-2020

A formal sleep study sounds like a good first step.

In the meantime, does that oximeter ring have the capability to download data to a computer or cell phone to show results over a long period of time?
If so, maybe posting the information as an image would be informative.

I don't want to understate or overstate the importance of SpO2 levels.
However, SpO2 levels that dip into the mid 80s briefly (for a few seconds) are not necessarily a concern providing they rapidly come back into the 90s and stay there.
The sleep study will measure your SpO2 levels throughout the entire night and will quantify how often your oxygen levels dip, how low they dip, how long your oxygen levels stay at various levels. In addition, by monitoring your breathing and body positions etc the study should give insight into why they dip, any relationship to your breathing patterns and ideas on what (if anything) to do about it.


RE: New member Introduction and questions - Westerx123 - 01-19-2020

The O2ring does log the data and allow me to transfer it to my cellphone and to a computer. I tried attaching a screenshot but couldn’t get it to work. Maybe I need more posts.


RE: New member Introduction and questions - ApneaQuestions - 01-19-2020

AFAIK everyone can attach an image straight away.
There may be a restriction on including a link in your first few posts to stop advertising spammers.

If you have the image on your computer, it's a 4 step process
1) Use the big "Reply button" instead of using the quick reply typing area
2) Next hit the "Browse..." button at the bottom of the screen where it says "attachments" to select the image
3) Then move over to the right and hit the "Add Attachment" button to actually add it to your post
4) Finally hit "Post reply"

There are also ways of drag and dropping images into the post but I can never get that to work.
The images look fine until I actually submit the post and then I just get 64,000 characters in my post instead of the actual image.
I never bothered to dig deeper on that to see what I'm doing wrong.


RE: New member Introduction and questions - Westerx123 - 01-19-2020

I’ll give it another try. If there is an attachment, it’ll be from Friday night. It won’t be the most readable at the large overnight scale. If you would like a closer look at a particular time range, I can get a zoomed in view. The white triangles are when the O2ring vibrated.


RE: New member Introduction and questions - Westerx123 - 01-19-2020

Here’s the screenshot from Sunday night with the drop down to 76%. After the O2ring woke me up, I didn’t have any awareness of low oxygen and kept breathing to get the ring to stop vibrating. When it didn’t stop vibrating after my first breath, I looked at the spo2 reading and saw it showed 80%. I had it set to alert when the spo2 was below 88%.